I studied professional journalism in college, and I’ve been a news industry junkie most of my life. I am willing to die on the hill that a common set of basic facts is the most essential ingredient to democracy – and people/organizations who are able and willing to hold power to account might be a close second. The vast majority of journalists care deeply about the communities they serve and are incredibly careful to objectively generate and curate information.
That’s why it’s really hard for me to accept a truth that crystallized during last week’s general election:
The mainstream (or legacy, or traditional) media in the United States have no meaningful power or influence in our country anymore.
It’s no secret: there are two bifurcated ideological realities in America today. A vast majority of mainstream media supported the candidates on one side. And yet a clear majority of Americans chose the candidate(s) from the other side. Americans disregarded, if not outright repudiated, their mainstream media.
Some insightful research reports have started to surface that underscore this conclusion. For example, the Civic Health and Institutions Project, a 50 States Survey (CHIP50), has some interesting data:
"Friends and family," not "news media," was the most-cited source of election information.
Only about a third of Americans say info from the news media was "very important" to their voting decisions.
The decline of mainstream media has been such a long-running trend that some of you might think I'm late to the party with this take. And, of course, Americans have voted in the past for candidates that media entities haven't supported. That said, it crossed a critical threshold last week.
But we all still need and crave information…that hasn’t changed at all. Some Americans still get it from the mainstream media. But it’s clear now that a majority of Americans get at least some of their information from one or more of the niche outlets and channels that have become vogue over the last 10-20 years. It’s those entities that speak directly to people and cater to what they care most about. The most trusted media celebrities in America today – the new Walter Cronkites and Tom Brokaws – are Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Alex Cooper, the Kelce brothers, etc.
I’m not saying that the mainstream media are dead. As long as there are people willing to support them, they will exist. It is a viable business, after all…there is money to be made. What I am saying: Americans today value and trust their chosen niche media outlets more. And those outlets are not fly-by-night shiny objects anymore; they're established enough now that they've displaced legacy mainstream media among at least a majority of Americans.
There are at least three lessons in this for professional communicators:
Your brand and messaging – and YOUR control of it – matter more than ever. You need a strong foundation from which to operate, and you need to try to control the narratives and dialogues around them as much as possible. This is because there are people out there with trusted audiences who can distort or even render you irrelevant with a single mouse click. They aren’t going anywhere; if anything, they’re gaining market share. You have to know what you want to say and be aggressive about saying it.
Channel strategy is more essential than ever. We can no longer draw up media relations campaigns to the usual suspects and feel confident that people are paying attention. Instead, we have to target the information channels that our target audiences care the most about – including the niche ones they trust. This requires more research and front-end work on our end, because many of those channels are hard to unearth and understand.
Truth, accuracy and fairness still matter. We have to vigorously defend our personal and organizational reputations, and be known as sources of accurate, actionable information. If we don’t have that, we can’t hope to build any sort of a meaningful relationship with any target audience. We’d have nothing.
There’s so much I could say about all of these things…I could write a whole book on this, and maybe I will someday. Trying to distill it all down to a few hundred words might be an exercise in futility. But there’s no question that our world changed a little more last week, so we need to take honest stock of where we are and adapt the best we can.
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